M&A Magnates

Fewer mid-market mergers and acquisitions closed last year - and at significantly less value - but several California firms managed to keep their piece of the pie. Latham & Watkins, for example, guided more mid-market deals (those valued between $10 million and $250 million) than any other firm in America. The Los Angeles?based firm's 85 mid-market M&As were worth a total of $8.17 billion, significantly ahead of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which advised on 49 deals worth the second-largest total value of $6.08 billion. Latham also advised Goldman Sachs on last year's largest single M&A transaction in any category: InBev's $58.9 billion purchase of Anheuser-Busch.

Overall, the number of M&As of all sizes in the United States dropped 24 percent in 2008 from the previous year, and the total value of deals was down a full 44 percent.

---